


Monsters Don't Get People Like You

by desperationandgin



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-23
Updated: 2014-08-23
Packaged: 2018-02-14 10:27:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2188332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/desperationandgin/pseuds/desperationandgin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post 3x22, Regina runs and Robin tries to keep her from making a mistake.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Monsters Don't Get People Like You

**Author's Note:**

> This was born out of two prompts I was given on tumblr. 'Please, put it down' and a line from If/Then: 'Thank you for finding me, and thank you for the care, but fuck you for making me think that this life might be fair.'

He hears her go, the bell over the door of the diner announcing her departure, but he never saw her face. Just sees Emma now, looking vacantly at the ground, and Snow White’s mouth hanging open while everyone else has gone silent, tense. Until he hears one of the dwarfs, Grumpy, he thinks, speak up.

"Anyone gonna stop her before she blows up the town?”

That snaps Robin out of his complete and utter daze, all at once angry at the suggestion that Regina would hurt anyone (she wouldn’t, he knows she wouldn’t, not now) and not knowing if he should stay, if his place is with the woman he let go or the woman he set free. It seems his legs make that decision for him, and he’s all at once leaving, Marian still clutching their son as he slams through the door, eyes looking wildly for Regina up and down the street. He runs, trying to catch up to her shrinking form, calls her name but she doesn’t stop, not until he’s close enough to reach out and grab her arm.

When she turns and he sees her face it makes his heart ( _use mine for the both of us_ ) twist and shatter. She’s crying, her face drawn and tight, clearly making an effort for him not to notice that she’s currently broken into a thousand jagged pieces. Her voice is rough and broken when she speaks.

“Don’t.”

He wants to ask,  _don’t what?_  but he never gets the chance as he hears Marian, his Marian, yelling down the street, yelling for him, yelling that Regina is a monster, and it makes him breathe heavier, watches as it makes Regina stand up straighter, taller, as if she knew it was coming and knows it defines her, and he realizes it does. She knows that moniker, has lived up to it for years and years, and those walls have gone back up, steadfast and firm. He’d torn at them until she’d laid vulnerable beside him, whispering to him every regret and heartache, but she erects them again so easily.

“Go to your wife.” Her voice is disconnected and frightening, he thinks. “I’m a monster. And monsters? Don’t get people like you.”

He doesn’t even get the chance to rebuttal before she disappears in a cloud of purple smoke.

 

No one sees her for days, and in a hushed whisper in the hallway of the bed and breakfast, he implores Emma to please, go check on her. When she reports back her voice is just as quiet, eyes flickering to the closed door and the wife she knows lies beyond it, but she does what he asked, tells him that Regina’s just drunk, and judging by the empty bottles she’s been drunk for a while. But there’d been no fight, only hollow threats with no follow through, and she was dressed, at least, not crying in bed. But drunk, drunk worries him after he thanks Emma and lays in bed that night. His wife says he’s distracted, he tells her that he’s trying to figure out where they should live, and he thinks about Regina, with nothing but whatever was in the bottles she had left.

She doesn’t go to work, doesn’t go to Granny’s, and when Snow goes to her home after a week, she returns to the not-needed-yet-still-gathered council to report Regina’s not there either. Theories abound while Robin sits stoically, knowing that wherever she’s gone and whatever she’s done, it’s because she’d handed him her heart, and while he hadn’t planned to, left her open and vulnerable, a gaping wound that she thought closed the night they kissed and kissed in the woods. He listens but not quite, his own thoughts racing. Maybe she crossed the town line, but could she? She wouldn’t go without Henry. She wouldn’t do anything, especially not the awful thing no one wants to say, because again, she can’t leave her son. But where could she be, where would she go, and then David’s eyes go wide. She has her mausoleum and Snow gasps because yes, that’s right, and then there’s dread. She has her mausoleum full of potion ingredients and spells, and what if.  _What if_?

Robin stands, demanding directions, and before anyone can offer to go with him, he leaves. The sleeping curse. That damned sleeping curse, because that’s what she’d told him, wasn’t it? That no one loved her, no one ever would, no one save Henry, and his chest hurts with the realization that she’s going to curse herself because she doesn’t think he wouldn’t do anything in this world or the next to be the one to kiss her awake.

He loves her.

He  _loved_  Marian.

He  _loves_  Regina.

Pushing through the door of the crypt, he sees the coffin pushed aside, though there are two and he wonders briefly how much she’s lost before going down, down, down, into darkness and the unknown. It’s eerie in this dark, with the cobwebs in the corners, and it reminds him of walking through secret underground passage ways.

  _I own my mistakes._

He would own this, this mistake, letting her sit and wonder and drink until cursing herself was the only viable solution to her pain. Rounding a corner, he goes down again and then sees her, silhouetted by flames lighting the room from sconces. Sees her holding a vial and bringing it to her lips and only has a moment, a second to speak. “Regina! Please, put it down.”

She startles, nearly drops the vial and oh, what a blessing that would have been, but she maintains her grip and looks at him. “No. No, that won’t be happening.”

“I’ll wake you. Regina, I will wake you before your head ever touches a pillow.”

Her laugh throws him off, and he frowns, unsure. “Regina?”

“I’m not going to sleep. I have Henry. No. What I’m doing is far less immobilizing.”

“Then what?”

She looks at him and she’s beautiful, he thinks, bathed in warm oranges even though she’s sad, eyes haunted and forlorn.

“I’m going to forget.”

“Forget? Forget what?”

When she looks at him pointedly, he realizes, and he didn’t know it was possible for his heart to feel this way. “Me. You’re trying to forget  _me_?”

“Why should I remember? Just another thing that hurts, another person taken away. I can fix my own pain, and I will.”

His panic is palpable as he rushes forward, her hand bringing the vial up again, his fingers wrapping tightly around her wrist. “I’m begging you not to do this. Don’t erase me.”

She struggles against him but his grip remains firm as she pushes and pushes, hot, angry tears already falling against her will. “You don’t get to do this! Decide what I should or shouldn’t do because of some noble cause. You made me think I could have something. You made me think I’d finally won. So thank you, Robin, for the times you cared, and thank you for what you tried to do. But you have a  _wife_. You have a wife who has never murdered, a wife who has never cursed an entire land. You have a wife, and she is good, and I’m a monster.”

He watches, watches as the resiliency he’s admired about her heart fades and goes dark, watches the light go out as if she’s been extinguished. He did this. But he’s still holding her, still keeping her from drinking the potion.

“Then I’ll make you remember.”

She scoffs but she’s stopped trying to get away from him. “How?”

“With magic more powerful than your curse. With true love’s kiss.”

“For that, you’d have to love me.”

There’s silence. Silence that stretches on and on as her eyes find his. At first she challenges, but he holds strong, keeps his gaze firmly locked on hers, and slowly she softens from anger and hurt to the faintest flickers of hope.

“You would have to love  _me_.”

As if she’s hard for him to love, as if he ever had a chance, as if that night in the woods he hadn’t known he would be hers. He says nothing, just bends and kisses her. Kisses her as if he might not ever be able to convince her again of what she did to him, to his heart, and then he kisses her some more.

“I love you.” It’s hushed and he’s breathing hard, and he hears her make a soft sound in the back of her throat, watches her forehead crease as if she doesn’t want to give in to him, doesn’t want to let herself believe, so he says it again.

“I love you.”

“No, you don’t.”

His hands move to her shoulders, grasping firmly and forcing her to look at him. “ _I love you_. And I’m not letting you do this. I won’t let you forget that you love me, too.”

Her eyes are filled with tears again and as they spill he catches each one, lips against skin and salt in his mouth.

“You made me want this. You made me think I could have you,” she whispers in accusation, eyes closed now, and his fingers move, gliding through her hair as his own tears mix with hers now.

“You have me. Don’t forget me.”

There’s a pause, seconds lapsing into moments, and then he hears glass shatter, the vial free from her hand, and she sags, the first sob wracking her frame against him and he holds her, presses her face into his neck and cradles the back of her head. He has no idea what to tell Marian, has got no clue how to navigate this, but he will. He holds Regina protectively, steps away from the glass, and lets his lips drag across her forehead. “I’ve got you..”

By the time she’s cried out he’s stopped too, her forehead pressing to his while his thumbs graze her cheeks. “Let’s go. Let me take you home.”

He has to talk to Marian, and this will all take time, but first they need to get out of this place where the past can wrap around Regina like a dark cloak and pull her down with it into the depths.

“You’ll stay?

Her question hangs in the air, her eyes open and on him, and he realizes then, his answer will be the only evidence Marian needs to know he’s made his choice.

“I’ll stay.”


End file.
